Seeing life differently.

self-forgiveness

Part of having ADHD is not only does it often feel like we don’t live up to others’ expectations of us, we often don’t live up to our own expectations of ourselves. This challenge is one such example of that—yes, I am getting all the posts done, but this entire week has been catching up posts. I’ll get the last day in on the last day, well, probably anyways. I set the bar high-but-doable for myself, and then—despite proclaiming it for the whole Internet to see—fell behind. Despite my best intentions, what happens always happens.

This is why the reward system works so well. Guess what? 99% of the time, my work gets submitted on time because there’s a financial incentive. That isn’t a bad thing. If I’m not on a deadline, my client knows at least a day or two in advance when I notice things are getting tight. And if they said “No, I need that in.” guess what? I’d be staying up all night to get it done for them. School was the same—the extensions I was given were due to legitimate things—ER trips, emergency surgery, and my grandpa passing away. It was never ADHD. Grades, like money, are enough of an incentive.

Personal goals are a bit different though. There are all kinds of systems to make personal goals work. I’ve actually done surprisingly well this month, believe it or not. I’ve meditated in some fashion every day (even if I still haven’t made morning meditations a thing. November.), and caught up quickly where I got behind on the planking. Although I got a bit tripped up with the app because I finally “failed” a day—didn’t make it the length I needed to—and then what happens is you have to redo the day. So that brings me in behind, too. I’ve tried the accountability partners but that’s proved to not be so successful, which is fine because I get it, people got their own stuff. I have to work, somehow, on the use of rewarding myself for reaching personal goals, I think. Except—other than like, a 3D printer pen—there’s not a lot of stuff I want. (I mean, I did go out and buy noise cancelling earphones yesterday, which are more of an investment, honestly…) I mean, I am the person who takes 3 months to make an Amazon order because I just want the darn free shipping.

There’s a lot of self-forgiveness that goes on with ADHD. I set plans, I start to follow through with them—and somehow I start strong and end up behind. It’s not a unique thing—non-ADHDers and ADHDers alike do it—but I feel like my track record for actually finishing something according to the plan i’ve made or dreamed up is about 20%, maybe. To date, I’ve finished no larger-scale writing projects that I’ve started in like, over ten years. We’ll see if NaNoWriMo 2016—coming up in November—will change that. It feels great to finish stuff: every time I hit submit on that last post or wrap things up and submit an invoice to a client, I feel like I’ve accomplished something, and it’s a bonus that I love what I get paid to do as much as I do.

So many things though that I don’t finish, I shrug off. Yes, I’d love to finish them. Resistance, however, is there, between me and the checkbox for each step or each project that I’ve started. Resistance is all of the reasons. And yet, self-forgiveness is a necessity in life with ADHD and a byproduct of that Resistance. Overcoming Resistance is easy—do the thing you are being called to do. And while self-forgiveness is required to coexist with my ADHD brain, it wouldn’t be required if I just did the shit I intended to.

Self-care in terms of self-forgiveness? Yeah I haven’t quite got this figured out yet.